Will it go round in circles
by Of Questionable Veracity
Summary: Two thinly-veiled author mouthpieces - I mean, uh, two Resistance grunts have a rambling conversation following the conclusion of events in Rise of Skywalker.


**Just a way of articulating some of my thoughts. You probably disagree, but then you're not reading this anyway, so no skin off your back, eh?**

First Order? Defunct.

Logistically improbable fleet of Star Destroyers? Star destroyed.

Emperor? Dead (again).

If there was ever a time for a celebration now was definitely it.

And so it was that the Resistance or at least what remained of it at this point was having something of a shindig. Hugs of joy, kisses of jubilation, handshakes of camaraderie, drinks of relief - that sort of thing. Everyone was having a fine old time.

All, perhaps, barring Rot, background Resistance grunt, who was sitting on a crate being quiet and looking thoughtful amidst all the happiness.

Spotting him doing this Cin, another background Resistance grunt and Rot's friend, broke away from the conversation she'd been having with a group of surviving pilots (about how great X-Wings were - the conclusion so far? That they were pretty great) and headed on over.

"Why so glum, chum?" She asked, sitting heavily along the crate and making Rot jump.

"Hmm? Oh, sorry. Just thinking," he said.

"What's there to think about? We won!" Cin said, giving him a playful - though perhaps somewhat harder than she'd initially meant, drinks had been taken after all - jab to the shoulder.

Couldn't argue with that, and Cin's enthusiasm and joy was so apparent that Rot couldn't help but chuckle. He rubbed his shoulder, too, but felt it best not to make an issue of it.

"I was thinking-" he started, but that was as far as he got.

"Wait, hold that thought, there's Rose," Cin said, pointing, and indeed there was Rose, hurrying, looking harried.

"Hey Rose," Cin called out and Rose, snapped out of whatever reverie she'd been in while walking looked up, saw her, and zeroed in on the pair of them on their crate.

"Hey guys," she said, a little on the breathless side.

"Feel like I haven't seen you in ages. You alright?" Cin asked.

"Yeah, yeah. Just, you know, busy," Rose said. She seemed strained.

"But it's a party! It's _the_ party!" Cin said, utterly appalled that, following on from what had been a fairly significant space battle (to put it mildly) poor Rose was still being rushed off her feet doing...whatever it was she did. A little bit of everything, seemingly.

"Just wrapping some things up," Rose said, smiling weakly.

"Surely you can sit for a minute?" Rot asked and for a moment Rose did seem tempted, but then some invisible psychic weight appeared to reassert itself and whatever strength had entered her left. She visibly deflated.

"Soon, maybe. Just got to go and do something somewhere where no-one'll see me for a bit," she said.

That seemed quite an oddly specific thing to say. The two grunts were perplexed.

"If you say so. When you're done and free there'll still be a spot here," Cin said, patting the crate beside her.

"We'll save a drink for you," Rot added.

"Thanks guys," Rose said

And then she was off again. They watched her go. She disappeared into the crowd far faster than they might have expected her to. It was kind of odd.

"Poor Rose, she's had a rough time," Cin said, shaking her head.

News to Rot, who only knew Rose in passing.

"She has?" He asked.

"Course! Her sister dies, she goes on some madcap adventure that doesn't turn out so great, she nearly gets executed - mean, that'll put a kink in anyone's day - then she just gets saddled with enough Resistance busywork to keep her in the background while all this business with the Emperor is going on. That, and a lot of people just don't like her. It's rough, like I say."

"Who doesn't like her? She's lovely!" Rot protested and Cin held her hands out, palms up and open, empty of answers.

"I don't know what to tell you. Some people are just like that," she said.

"Bastards. She's lovely," Rot said, clucking his tongue and shaking his head.

Some people indeed. Mean, her crashing into Finn that one time had been a bit weird and - according to rumour - she'd given a pretty hamfisted speech following the crash but what of it? Everyone has their moments of weakness.

And it all worked out alright in the end, hadn't it? All that business with the running away and Holdo and Krayt and all that had turned out to barely matter anyway, somehow, having next to no impact on the resolution of things, so who cared about Rose crashing into anyone? She remained lovely regardless of the quality of her speeches!

"Bah," Rot said, still annoyed at having learned of this dislike, a sour fact now sitting in his brain. To distract he thought back to what he'd been thinking about before, and tried to get it rolling again: "So yeah like I was saying, I was thinking-"

Cin cut him off again, to his chagrin.

"And Poe's over there, looking over at - hey, who's that?" She asked, pointing. Rot - mouth still open from being midway through his sentence - swallowed his words, looked over and frowned, seeing someone he did not recognise.

"The lady in the gold helmet? No idea," he said.

Cin squinted at the lady in the gold helmet and at Poe gesturing at her.

"Are they friends?" She asked.

"I guess? We weren't introduced."

There were a lot of new faces around lately. Things had been pretty hectic last few days. Hours? Hard to keep track, especially in space.

Just one of those things.

"Huh. Well, whatever. He's allowed friends. And ah, speaking of, there's Finn! Let's wave!" Rot said.

Rot waved while Cin personally favoured a hearty thumbs up. Finn, in turn, responded by giving both a wave _and_ a thumbs up at once, much to the delight of the grunts, and then carrying on along his way to go talk to whoever it was he was going to talk to. Busy lad he was.

"Top bloke that Finn," said Cin.

"Top bloke, top bloke," Rot agreed, nodding.

"You know he gave me credits for the vending machine the other day? Wouldn't let me pay him back!" Cin said and she wasn't kidding - he wouldn't accept it! Said she shouldn't worry about it!

"Top bloke," Rot said again, frowning a little to himself. "Which is a bit worrying, if you think about it."

"Why?"

"Well you know how he got nabbed as a kid, right? He told you about that?"

"Yeah, but we knew the First Order did that anyway, bastards. Stealing kids, messing with their heads, turning them into cannon fodder," Cin growled, pounding a fist into her palm.

Even by the standards of an organisation that had shown a willingness to blow up planets - hell, whole systems! - stealing kids was still a dick move. Just seemed unnecessarily evil, really. Cin was fairly certain the First Order handbook also mandated that all pets in the houses ransacked for kids should be kicked, too.

She wouldn't put it past them.

"Exactly. first rate pricks. So yeah, we know that. A good chunk of the Stormtroopers are just kids who got taken, brainwashed and made into soldiers without a whole lot of say in the matter. And then we have to fight them and we have to shoot them - you and me have shot a bunch just on our own, ain't we?"

"A whole bunch," Cin nodded with perhaps a touch more relish than was required.

"But, like, Finn was like that, wasn't he? And look how he turned out. How many of these poor fuckers were just doing what they'd been beaten into shape to do? How many could have turned out as nice as Finn if they'd had the chance? Only we shot them?" Rot asked.

"Oh," said Cin, this time without relish.

She hadn't thought about it that way before.

"I know, right? Doesn't make me feel good. Like hell, that horse lady, she's ex-First Order too," Rot said, nodding over to the horse lady in question.

"She seems nice," Cin said.

"Haven't really got to know her yet but yes, she does seem nice. And that's kind of the problem. They could all be nice! And they were just kids! Mean, back when dad was gunning down Stormtroopers he said you could be pretty certain they were a card-carrying bastard who'd signed up - not like the Imperial Army, Stormtroopers were the hardcore ones. But these were just kids! Stolen! And we shoot them. See what I'm saying?"

"I do, I do," Cin said.

"Kind of too late now, I suppose," Rot sighed.

Some part of him wondered whether now, with hostilities either wrapping up or wrapped up, there would have to be some sort of system set up to reform the Stormtroopers, and whether it'd also work to try and get them back to the homes they'd been snatched from. A daunting task, surely, but it had to be the right thing to do. Didn't it? The decent thing.

Rot was glad it wasn't his job either way.

The two of them went quiet for a moment, the wind kind of taken out of the sails of the conversation by this rather grim aside. It was something that had been gnawing at Rot for a while now, and would gnaw at Cin too now that he'd passed it on.

Keen to move on Rot sat up straight and looked around.

"Where's the lady of the hour, anyway?" He asked, slapping his thighs.

"Who? Rey? Oh, who knows. Probably doing something else important. She's always being pulled this or that way to do that or this thing. Sometimes it kind of feels like the galaxy itself can't quite settle on what it wants to do with her," Cin said.

She'd bumped into Rey briefly once, and she'd seemed nice. Busy though. Always something needed her attention, always something she had to be doing. Rot felt much the same.

"Probably a Force thing. Probably?" He ventured. Cin shrugged.

"Probably," she said.

Most things that seemed arbitrary, random or difficult to explain turned out to be Force things. You kind of got used to it after a while, particularly if you were just a background grunt. If you didn't make a fuss about it you tended to live longer.

"Anyway, sorry, before all that I think you were saying something?" Cin asked, swivelling a bit on the crate so she was better facing him.

"Was I?" Rot asked, blinking, baffled. They'd gone off on so many tangents he'd quite lost the thread. It all came back to him quickly enough though - all the surroundings reminded him. "Oh! Oh yes. I'm happy about all this, about us winning, obviously I'm happy, I'm just concerned."

"About what?"

"Well," he said, shifting in a little so he was sitting more comfortably, his bottom starting to go numb. "I was thinking. My grandfather was involved in the Clone Wars, right? Not fighting, just some contract work on one of those old Star Destroyers."

"Star Destroyers?" Cin asked, confused. Weren't they bad guy ships?

"Yeah, the old ones. Uh, not the old ones we were just blowing up, the ones before those. Venators? The Republic ones? That kind of thing. Anyway, point is, my grandfather was involved in that war, right? That ends, Empire comes in, my dad gets into the Rebellion, he fights in _that_ war. We get the New Republic which sticks around for a bit only to get destroyed in _this_ war that you and me fought in. I'm just…"

He trailed off, fishing for the words.

"My kids aren't going to have to be fighting in the next one, are they? When this all happens again in like, twenty, thirty years time?"

"You really know how to puncture the mood, don't you Rot?" Cin said. She sounded sour.

"Hey look, I'm sorry but it's a concern, isn't it? Dad told me about all the celebrations after the second Death Star got blown up and the Emperor got killed - well, not 'killed' killed but, you know, everyone figured he was dead so it works out the same. Dancing in the streets! Statues pulled down! Galaxy-wide party! Everyone was happy! Figured that was it! Job done!"

Rot's dad had been very effusive about this, telling a young Rot not to take the peace he grew up in for granted, to remember the sacrifices, the struggle, and young Rot had done so - it had been a primary motivating factor in his joining up himself.

"Then it all just...happens again. Only bigger and shinier. They even still had Stormtroopers! All over again! Star Destroyers again! And something that made the Death Star look like a cheap joke! Poor dad. Felt like he'd done all he'd done for nothing. He had friends die in the last one, just so his son could go in for the next one," Rot said.

Rot's dad hadn't been very happy in the last few years, the only ray of hope being that grandfather - Rot's dad's dad - had lived long enough to see the Republic come back, but not long enough to see it go away again. That would have just been depressing.

"Yeah but it won't happen again this time. We won! That's it!" Cin insisted. She felt very, very strongly about this. Rot wasn't so sure.

"That's what they thought last time though, ain't it? And it depends on what happens next. A lot of what led into this was just how badly handled everything after the last war was. Just a fucking mess. I mean, I know we had the Military Disarmament Act, but-" he started but, again, true to form, Cin cut across him.

"The what?" She asked.

"The thing that reduced the New Republic's military? Greater emphasis placed on planetary defence forces? It's why there wasn't a Republic army or fleet or anything to come crashing down on the First Order when they started causing problems. Well, that and general flip-flopping and bureaucratic inertia. Politics, eh?" Rot said with a 'what you gonna do' kind of a cadence. Cin stared at him, appalled.

"Why would they do that?" She asked.

"What? The act? Eh, I guess towards the end of the war - the last one, not this one - there was a feeling that having a massive army sitting around was an invitation to use it. And I guess the last time the Republic _did_ have a big army sitting around someone did use it."

Took Cin a second to work that one out, but then she got it.

"Oh, right. The Empire. Still seems like a dumb idea," she said.

"It was a dumb idea but that's politicians for you. Not the best long-term planners. And I guess they figured what with having just got out of a war they couldn't afford to throw their weight around, wanted to keep everyone on-side," Rot said.

This explanation had always seemed vaguely convincing to Rot. At least, he could see some sort of logic running through it. It made sense to him. He didn't like it, but it held together.

For her part, Cin was hearing about it for the first time and wasn't feeling especially happy about it.

"Wish someone had told me this earlier, it'd have made the whole 'Resistance' thing make more sense…" She grumbled, taking a swig from the bottle she'd been nursing the whole time.

Cin had always felt that dubbing themselves 'The Resistance' right from the start had been needlessly undermining. 'Resistance' implied a certain level of passivity to her mind, suggestive of struggle against a force that was by very definition stronger and more powerful, but she hadn't been in charge of branding and had arrived too late anyway - the name had stuck by the time she'd signed up.

"You didn't do the required reading?" Rot asked and Cin sputtered, spitting out her drink.

"There was reading?!"

She'd just been shooting at the guys in the scary armour! She hadn't thought there'd be much more to it! Certainly the instructor at the Resistance camp hadn't mentioned _any_ of this! They'd just told her which end of the gun to point towards the guys wearing white.

"It was all in the Resistance introduction packet they gave out. Or it was in mine. Didn't you ever wonder _why_ we were having to basically fight the Empire all over again?" Rot asked and Cin shook her head vigorously.

"No! I didn't think I was supposed to be wondering that! Just thought we were meant to be getting on with it," she said, coupling her statement with a very emphatic fist-pump, to demonstrate 'getting on with it'.

Rot considered this, and saw her rock-solid sincerity and - not for the first time - wondered if maybe he was in the minority in thinking about the things he thought about.

"Huh. Maybe it's just me…" He said.

They went quiet again.

The party continued.


End file.
